Gone Girl is an American 2014 psychological thriller directed by David Fincher. It is written and based on Gillian Flynn’s 2012 novel of the same title. This film isn’t just about marriage. It’s about a twisted marriage and how one can always find a way (a rather extreme one, in this case) to make it work.
Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike play as Nick and Amy Dunne, the remarkably screwed up couple. The film starts with the lovely head of Amy, on Nick’s lap as he muses about cracking her skull open so he could know what she’s really thinking. Rather than slowly diving into the dark bits, the film plunges right in within the first few seconds of the film. You know this is going to be a wild ride right from the beginning. The story then shifts to the morning when Amy decides to disappear leaving quite a heck of a mess for her husband to clean. It’s interesting to see how perfect Nick and Amy’s relationship seems at first and the kind of haunting disaster it soon becomes. The fact that Amy goes to such extreme lengths because Nick wouldn’t give her attention is quite fascinating and it’s safe to assume that she might even have Munchausen syndrome. But hey, you’ve got to give it to her, she does manage to pull it all off brilliantly. She clearly knows how to get what she wants. Nick, well he is smart, just not enough. While he has options to escape the trap that Amy had set for him, he is unable to think out of the box. And perhaps some part of him does want to stay with her. Margo who is played by Carrie Coon, acts as a moral compass for Nick throughout the film and is possibly the only character who sees through Amazing Amy and Cool Amy that the real Amy pretends to be.
Can someone actually be able to pull this off? Probably not. With the amount of CCTV devices that are in every possible nook and corner, it’s impossible to not get caught. Also, let’s be honest — her dyed hair and glasses were a sorry excuse for a disguise. Plus, it’s fairly unbelievable that the motel neighbors who robbed her couldn’t recognise her because it’s pretty evident that almost the entire nation is aware of Nick and Amy’s tale.
The screenplay is written quite efficiently and unlike many psychological mystery thrillers which seem to drone on for too long, this one is surprisingly quick-paced. The dialogues are eerily articulate and some of them really make you question many things like: the constitution of marriage, the role the media and its trials play in high profile crime stories, amongst other things. The film also explores the concept of modern marriage in America, where to keep a marriage afloat people are willing to even kill. A much more recent and somewhat similar version of Nick and Amy could be Joe and Love from the Netflix series You. It’s intriguing how they make killing, not effortless but doable, so much so that people actually have started to ponder over the how-to’s of a perfect crime.
The colours and light play a key role in the film. Amy has well-lit shots in the beginning whereas Nick would mostly be in shadows. And the scene in which Amy kills Desi, the room is seemingly quite plain, whites and beige, as though begging for some colour to be added and after Amy gracefully slits his throat, the gushing red is quite a dramatic addition to the colour palette. The score is foreboding and invokes suspense in the film, but does not overwhelm the plotline.
One question that Gone Girl leaves its viewers with is to marry or to not marry. And if you do happen to find yourself in a similar situation where you’re Amy then, good for you. However, if you’re Nick…good luck, you need it.
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